The dream, viewed as a mere wish-fulfilment, is plainly a successful allegory. While the action of the principal cue or immediate stimulus had served to evoke the apperception-mass or context out of which this wish-phantasy was constructed, at the same moment, there was an ulterior influence at work, dictating a process of re-arrangement of the secondary images, so as to give expression to my preference for reflexology as against histology. Besides, the ground appears to have already been so well prepared that we can readily explain the absence of evident signs of trial-and-error. For in dreaming that I look away from the microscope and turn with intensive interest to the reflex, I was still only giving effect to a preference which had already attached the emotions of liking and dislike, to these two objects of thought, respectively. The creative fancy in this instance, what Hobbes[34] called the FICTION of the mind, has a very simple task to work upon: achieving the imaginary satisfaction of unadjusted feelings regarding the mental conflict between histology and reflexology. The MICROSCOPE is accordingly reproduced naively with an "endeavor fromward" attached to it, and likewise the REFLEX, with an "endeavor toward" it.[*] Thus is the expression completed of a wish which had been partially outspoken in the conversation with Dr. X.
[*] Hobbes, "Leviathan," Cap. VI: "These small beginnings of motion, within the body of man, before they appear in walking, speaking, striking, and other visible actions, are commonly called ENDEAVOUR. This endeavour,. when it is toward something which causes it, is called APPETITE, or DESIRE; . . . And when the endeavour is fromward something, it is generally called AVERSTON. These words appetite and aversion, we have from the Latins, and they both of them signify the motions, one of approaching, the other of retiring. So do also the Greek words for the same, which are Horme and Aphorme."
In this connection, I beg leave to suggest that these Greek terms are more usefully applied to dreams and to the passions in general, in their uncomplicated primitive sense, rather than in the new way that Dr. C. G. Jung is suggesting for Horme, as a companion word for Libido or for elan vital. For several years, I have found it useful to employ the coined adjectives hormetic and aphormetic to characterize the tendencies fromward or toward, as exhibited in the association of ideas. For example, in the Scratch Reflex dream, there is shown an aphormetic tendency regarding the microscope and a hormetic tendency regarding the reflex.
While the external physical stimulus (scratching) must be thought of as being represented dynamically somewhere in the arrival platforms of the brain, it is necessary to think of the internal psychic stimulus (or wish) as existing in the form of facilitations, or ready-made connections of ideas and motives, as it were awaiting, in a state of mobilization, the proper signal to discharge into consciousness. The expression of the wish thus became accessory to the apperception of the principal cue. The accessory wish-cue wrought its effect coetaneously, during the apperceptive delay.
Granted the correctness of this explanation, does it not clearly conform to the statement of Emerson that "dreams are the maturation often of opinions not consciously carried out to statements, but whereof we already possessed the elements."[*]
[*] Emerson, R. W., "Lectures and Biographical Sketches," Vol. X, Complete
Works, p. 8; Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1904.
THE PERSEVERATION OF THE UNADJUSTED
In the foregoing words of Emerson, there is brought to bear on dreams an energic conception of mind-action similar to that which Hobbes had developed in his Leviathan in 1651. The latter, by analogy with conceptions of mechanical inertia new in his time, had compared the persevering effect of nervous stimuli to the continued agitation of waves of the sea after a storm: "When a body is once in motion, it moveth, unless something else hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in an instant, but in time, quite extinguish it; and as we see in water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after: so also it happeneth in that motion, which is made in the internal parts of man, then, when he sees, dreams, et cetera." (Cap. II)
The Delage-Woodworth conception that dreams are due to persevering effects of unadjusted mental elements is not, therefore, entirely novel; but is itself a maturing of opinions which have been more or less loosely entertained by writers on dreams since Hobbes first formulated the modern doctrine of the association of ideas,—not to go back any further. The fertility of the conception of the "perseveration of the unadjusted" has been emphasized in my mind by illustrations obtained by an extended study of the dreams of normal people, and notably, by the agreement of my conclusions with those of Professor Woodworth and of Dr. Morton Prince. And I am led to believe that a development of this conception should harmonize with accepted principles of psychology, normal and abnormal, as formulated in Ladd and Woodworth's text-book, and in Prince's "The Unconscious."
Greater precision must be conferred upon this conception by showing specifically in what ways, and by what associative mechanisms, the persevering and unadjusted stimuli evoke the dream-images. Granting that unadjusted stimuli persist in their effects upon dream life, or in other terms, that primary stimulus-ideas may evoke secondary dream-images, and so on unto the third and fourth "generations;" then, in what manner does the process go on or come to an end? The answer to this question is an eminently practical one, to which Psycho-analysis has already brought the complication of its own still immature formulation of Ab-reaction and of Catharsis.[35] The matter still requires further study. In particular, it is necessary to formulate, through specific examples, a conception which shall be the pendant or complement of the theory of the perseveration of the unadjusted, and which I will call the "resolution of the unadjusted."